Interaction of discrete breathers with electrons in nonlinear lattices

Abstract

We study the effects of electron-lattice interaction in the presence of discrete breathers. The lattice is treated classically. We consider two different situations - i) the scattering of an electron by a discrete breather in the semiconducting regime, where the electron-breather distance is large compared to the breather size, and ii) the appearance of a bound electron-breather state, which exists at least over one half of the breather period of oscillation. In the second case the localization length of the electron can be of the order of the breather size - a few lattice periods. Remarkably these results are derived in the absence of disorder, since discrete breathers exist in translationally invariant nonlinear lattices.